Today Was a Good Day

To quote Ice Cube, today was a good day!  Tuesdays are typically up in the air for me since I'm not in the office, and with the absolutely perfect weather today I decided to take advantage of it.  I went for a long run along the lake, the cool breeze off of the water was perfect and my newly stocked workout mix on my iPhone got me through 9 miles.  I also snagged a couple steals at Goodwill, I have a new found obsession with goodie hunting at the one down the street from me.  Today I scored a box of Kerr jars which I plan on using for an upcoming project and a white porcelain serving dish, go me : )

The later half of the day was spent in the kitchen.  Over the last year or so Ive been experimenting with making my own protein and granola bars, today I made a batch with some new ingredients- organic puffed rice and puffed kamut.  I thought these would be a different approach than what I have done in the past, which is mainly a whole wheat flour/oat/flax meal base.  To the puffed grains I added oats, dried blueberries, dried cranberries, goji berries, dates, flax seeds, almonds, brown rice syrup, and a touch of honey.  The puffed grains add a significant lightness that I haven't achieved so far, these were also much stickier than any bar Ive  made in the past.  They turned out pretty tasty but I think I'm going to try tweaking them a bit next time around.

After the bars were complete I started in with dinner which included a saute of Rainbow Swiss Chard with little bits of bacon (this is a rarity in our house but it totally made the dish) and topped it with these adorable onion rings I made.

The base of the meal was this Lemony Lentil Salad with Salmon, which I really enjoyed but Wren has discovered he doesn't like the texture of cold lentils.

I think all of the vibrant colors in the food inspired some new chalkboard artwork from Wren, I like!